Monitoring the Costa Corcodia with Topcon Total Station

With 14 decks, the Italian-made Costa Concordia cruise ship was a gargantuan-size vessel by any accounts. It measured 290 metres long, 35.5 metres wide, and weighed 114,500 tons. It was the biggest of a half-dozen “dream class cruise ships” owned and operated by Costa Crociere, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation and Carnival plc. Unfortunately, on January 13, 2012, one of Europe’s largest cruise ships and the largest Italian cruise ship ever built, the Costa Concordia struck a rock in the Tyrrhenian Sea just off the shore of Isola del Giglio, near the western coast of Italy. This accident tore a 49-metre-long gash in her hull. With water flooding in and listing, the capsized cruise ship drifted back to